This was some kind of duel for the eyes. The left one couldn’t stop bulging at the sight of Mike Rupp, the New York center who kept lumbering furiously around the rink as if he were in some kind of Divas Matchup, looking to regain the belt.

The right eyeball preferred to obsess over Zach Parise, who was developing a spine right there in front of us. Recently he had curiously sunk into the ice for most of four playoff games, but now, as the Rangers searched for something to hit, the Devils’ captain stretched to a whole different level.

Is it possible to grow a centimeter or two at the age of 27? Because that’s what Parise did Monday night, his chest lifted, his posture board-straight as his two goals and assist for New Jersey righted an Eastern Conference finals that still seems as if it’s one stiff blow from spinning off the axis.

"Feels much better," Devils forward Adam Henrique said, after the Devils’ 4-1 victory equaled the series at two games apiece. "Zach pulled us up and it's a new series now."

You know how you can walk into a place—a bank, a gym, a dog run, anywhere that reeks of testosterone—and easily pick out the alpha? In Game 4 at the Rock, as scores of obnoxious New Yorkers invaded it as if it were July at the Jersey Shore, Parise simply refused to allow his team to lose.

Flying everywhere, his passes terrific, Parise scored on a power-play goal in the third that put the home team up 3-0, and later snared an empty netter with 1:29 left and the Rangers pressing. Long before those goals, Parise led an intensified parade of forechecks on the Rangers’ defense, essentially squashing what had been New York’s super strength.

Because of Parise, the Devils were faster, more physical—even their so-called “flops” zinged with energy—and it wasn’t long before frustration spread across the Rangers’ faces, before they were goaded into some foolish late-game mischief.

Rupp was particularly comical, a tough guy sent on a stalk-and-destroy mission after the Devils took that 3-0 lead. Once he was a New Jersey favorite—a gritty hard worker who also sometimes was a goon who also happens to be a born again Christian who also happens to be playing despite having a rare syndrome that can, in extreme circumstances, cause sudden cardiac death.

Way back in 2003, Rupp scored the goal that clinched the Cup for the Devils. He still knows this team intimately, understands what feeds the beast. So hot off the faceoff he laid a booming hit on Peter Harrold, a message meant not for the Devils but for the Rangers, who had been sleep-skating.

After flattening half the NJ roster, Rupp looped around the crease and with one hand popped Devils goalie Martin Brodeur in the chest. It was a cheap, bush league move by Rupp, a clear lack of respect aimed at his friend and teammate for four seasons. Leaping backward in shock, Brodeur at least didn’t pull any muscles.

“I guess I proved I can take a hit,” joked Brodeur, who made 28 of 29 saves and notched his goalie-record fourth playoff assist on Parise's empty netter.

This hasn’t been a series short on erudite conversations—if the players were mic’d it would sound like something out of the Real Housewives shows—but Brodeur insisted, straight-faced, that he “was minding my own business, for real.”

“But I never really yap at anybody, especially not him, because he's so big. He just kind of turned around and I guess he was pumped up and wanted to get somebody and I guess I was the first target for him to hit me,” Brodeur added. “It's unfortunate that somebody has a right to go out and kind of sucker you like that, but they got a four-minute penalty and it killed time for us to win the game.”

Madness ensued, Rupp getting a 10-minute misconduct, Ryan Carter and Stu Bickel wrestling, Steve Bernier pratfalling and soon there were the two coaches, leaning over to scream from their respective benches and poke the air as if it were each other’s eyeballs.

Can we just set up a cage match outside Madison Square Garden on Wednesday.

night before Game 5 and settle it there? Let Peter DeBoer and John Tortorella arm wrestle or do whatever they need to release their simmering hostility, because it’s taking away from some fairly fine hockey.

Already we’ve had DeBoer labeling Brandon Prust’s unpenalized elbow from Game 3 “head-hunting, plain and simple,” and Tortorella firing back (before Prust was suspended for a game) that the Devils had gotten away with equal or worse, and that they had been exaggerating falls and flops and setting illegal picks and leaving the visitor’s locker room a disgraceful mess.

All of Tortorella’s complaints were true, except maybe for the one about the Devils being messy. “We tell our players to get up,” he had said, a clear shot designed to earn his team the benefit of the whistle in Game 4. It failed, miserably.

Instead, it was DeBoer who adjusted perfectly after a loss, who tweaked his lines and pushed the right buttons. Layers of heat circled his shiny head when it became clear the Rangers were targeting Brodeur, the 40-year-old who again has dipped into the fountain of youth and who the Devils can’t possibly afford to lose.

Somewhere in all that finger pointing and heat rising, DeBoer also appeared to be ripping Tortorella for Bickel’s crosscheck across the neck of the Devils' Carter. Tortorella might have been screaming about Ilya Kovalchuck’s gutless spear that connected with Ryan Callahan’s midsection. The eyes followed the coaches’ X-rated mouths, watched them as they practically vaulted the partition separating the benches.

"I just thought it was a legal hit," Tortorella later said of Rupp’s check on Harrold that initiated the chaos. "None of that would've happened if we kept on playing the game."

Don’t bet on it. And don’t for a second think Wednesday’s Game 5 hasn’t now added an entirely new frothing, steaming underbelly to the festivities.